


Home in the head

by Sagealina



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Marriage, Pete's World, Psychic Bond, Sexual Tension, psychic dilemma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:50:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sagealina/pseuds/Sagealina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home is were the heart is, but for the Doctor's impressive brain it may rather be where his head's at. Alongside the TARDIS's disappearance from Pete's world. Rose's cold shoulder has definitely affected the new Time Lord's psyche. The combination may prove to be too much for the Meta-crisis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home in the head

The TARDIS faded, accompanied by her unique sound. 

The heartbreak was not just Rose Tyler's. Having to watch a version of the man you love leave you with a well-known stranger. But it was also the departure of a long-time friend. One he had been linked to for centuries. As strongly bonded as if they'd been married.

As the last traces of the blue police box faded, so did the mother of all migraines begin made its appearance. Blooming behind his eyes like the sunrise does beyond the horizon. It was indeed a new day. A new beginning. It won't be without turmoil.

And while he had Rose's hand tightly gripped in his and concentrating on that tangible positive fact. That she was with him now. That she had chosen him! His expression did not convey though as he turned to Rose Tyler's concerned face. 

No. 

He was anything but comforted. As the last few hours' events replayed through his mind, he was certain of one thing; The Doctor who'd left him stranded here was right; He is and always would be... a murderer. Twice over in fact. How could he ever keep calling himself 'The Doctor' when he had his actions against Davros and the Daleks as pure proof.

-Born in battle. Full of Blood and Anger and Revenge. / You made me better / “But he's not you'!”. He needs you. Thats very me.-

Flinching, the Time Lord Meta-crisis buckled under the weight of these thoughts. Along with the disappearance of his telepathic isomorphic link with his unique and beautiful time machine.

-Goodbye old friend-  
SNAP

His knees wobbled slightly and he fell to the ground.

“Doctor? Doctor! Whats wrong?” 

His now sweaty grip slipped from her's and he grabbed at the beach's sand. Coughing once, he cleared his throat and managed to make his way back up by semi-jumping with a movement of false energy. Waving his hands to loosen the rocky grains and jumping a few times from foot to foot. His mind was off and the feeling of being alone in his own head was very shocking.

“Nothing. Just a bit of a spatial disorientation as the dimensions closed. That's all.” 

But unlike his usual brush-offs, he couldn't get his upbeat mask back on quite right. Nor throw his head back and crane it towards his extended family with that confident self-assured smirk he would regularly sport. His face remained frozen in a semi-scowl and it could not be coaxed into anything else. Instead, he hid it by turning away and bending down to shake his head of the continued vertigo.

His shoulders were stiff and tense and he slowly doubled over as his headache continued to accrue. 

“You are so full of yourself, Doctor. Stop it! Just STOP it! Tell it to me straight. If there's something wrong with you, I want to know about it now. Not later. You owe it to me.” She grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. Despite him being much taller, she still managed to look down on him from his bent posture.

Rose Tyler, Defender of earth and of this parallel universe. More-so than him. The most formidable woman on the planet- nay- the universe. The one that could put The Doctor in his place. Succeeding repeatedly and brilliantly at it. Making him feel like a naughty child for not-telling. Guiltily, the Doctor lifted his sad brown eyes towards her own. Internally committing himself to frankness.

These were new beginnings.

“Its the TARDIS. She's gone. There's always been a part in my mind that's just been... connected to her. And its been ripped away.” The Doctor conveyed the information with a gesture of his hand miming an explosion, whilst his other supported his bent posture on one knee. 

“Lucky me, I'm still in my first few hours of regeneration. Should be no permanent damage.” He turned the hand as if indicating a leap of time in a dismissive gesture. “But we best find a place where I can lay down. I'm a-about to to...” He breathed through his nostrils and collected himself. “ H...have an-n'...n'other...Neural Implosion. Bloody hell.” 

He struggled to finish the last bit and Rose's hands on his shoulders kept him upright. She was now struggling to support his weight, as the energy of his body seemed to desert him entirely. Jackie shuffled to help her daughter with a cellphone pressed to her one ear.

“Ha! S'like the first time this mug met yours Rose Tyler. Hmmm?” He ponders, shaking his head to clear it. In a slightly happier tone he adds. “Brings back m-memories doesn't it?” 

“Yeah... it does that.”

Flinching, the Doctor let himself be assisted by the two woman and was seated on a rock while Jackie used her phone to contact Torchwood.

“Rose... Rose?” He latches onto her hands emphatically, feeling disoriented by it all.

The blonde woman completely forgot about everything and anything. Her whole world re-converged on him and despite everything he's done. Everything horrible he believed himself to be; Genocidal, Maniac Time Lord Human Meta crisis. She made him fell. Well... -Loved!

“Doctor?”

He couldn't keep it bottled up. He'd been running on nothing but the excess regeneration energy of his counterpart and the atomically re-synthesized human adrenaline for the last hours. He exhales excess Atron energy as part of the process and the particle cloud dispersed harmlessly into the air. She inhales sharply in surprise at the sight of it. With an apologetic lift of his eyebrow, he searched for her understanding and found glimmers of remembrance in them.

With his teeth firmly clenched, he manages to convey “The pilotfish may exist or n-not in this universe Rose.” He haltingly continues. “N-No way of telling.” 

With a finality he crushed his eyelids in pain and cracked them up to see Rose still worrying over him. 

“Uh...I just n-need. I n.... need.”

She brushes the sweaty locks of his hair away from his boggled eyes. Remembering nostalgically a time when she had done the same with him sleeping vulnerably in her mother's bed.

“A superheated infusion of free radicals and tannins Doctor?”- She manages to keep a serious looking in her eyes, with one corner of her lips lifted in a sly sarcastic manner which was uniquely hers.

Despite his synapsis going haywire and barely registering anything around him anymore, he gives her a goofy exclamation of mirth, a small smile and a look of hopeful glee. 

“I love you.” He repeats before giving into sweet darkness.

O0o0o0o

The smell of a smokey pine-like aroma filled his nostrils first and foremost. It was then that he felt a warm beverage being gently placed to his mouth. Barely aware and conscious he reflexively swallows the infusion.

“There, hope that helps.” The clink of porcelain resounds in his head like cymbals.

“Hmm...” He groggily makes his semi-conscious state known with a grunting affirmation. 

Cracking a brown eye open, a single one. His eyebrow lifted in question. Taking stock of his surroundings, his metabolism was already hyper-conducting the tannin. The radical atoms from his regeneration combining with the free-radicals of the tea. His system prioritized his brain., as it should. He needed more.

“Sou...chong?” He lisped.

“You told me once it was your favourite. Yeah?” Rose climbed on the side of the bed in her bathing robe.

He turned his head very faintly to look at the side mantle. Hotel-standard alarm clock, pen and writing pad with the cup of tea lying on the bedside table . The Doctor turned back to his favourite human and cracked a small smile.

“L...Longifolen H.hydro...carbons.” 

She stared at him blankly, but brought back the cup up. “I imagine thats your way of saying more?”

He confirmed in with the least amount of energy possible, a small tip of his head. She diligently brought the cup up to his lips and he made a great effort of bringing his own hands to guide it. He felt a million times better once the chemical reactions he needed catalyzed.

It took longer to process and he had to remember... he was partially human now. Of course it would. 

As he had squirmed in this new form, fretting with Donna. He now had time to take stock of it and found it odd. He fidgeted, internally assessing some of the different composition of his organs. Essentially the same configuration as a human's. Just some different biological chemicals and pathways. Less... efficient that. But technically the same. At least he actually could take internal diagnostics with his superior brain.

“You look... very pensive. What are you think about Doctor?”

He shook his head a bit. “Tha' my head F.feels like it got run through the r...rings of Collabria.”

She made a small humming sound of mirth which he absorbed and felt distinctively in his single heart as affection. He deposited his empty cup into her awaiting hands but kept eye contact with her. She coughed, turning bashfully away from his intense scrutiny after a moment. 

“We're ta leave tomorrow. Dad's sent a zeppelin to pick us up. We're shacked up in this cosy inn for the night. My room's next door to yours.” She stood up and arranged her bathrobe more tightly and she avoided looking at him as she made to move away.

The Doctor frowned. Observant as always of human-y behaviour.

“Stay?” 

She instantly bit her lower lip. A Rose Tyler behaviour which he associates with her encountering a difficult dilemma.

“Oh... I see.” In a remorseful tone he fell more firmly into his pillows and pretended to be resigned to sleeping alone. But knowing her...

He was sorry to play this with her, but he had to resort to reversed psychology. He knew she would play into games of guilt. The brown eyed alien knew without any doubt that she was uncomfortable with the concept of him as a Meta-crisis. Comfortable with The Doctor being an alien, certainly! But not with there being 2 of the same being.

“No... No. Its not that Doctor. I...”

Closing his eyes, the part TimeLord grabbed his left ear and cleared his throat. 

“I fully understand your miss-givings and confusion luv. Lets just... talk about it some then. You know it'll please me like no tomorrow to run off my gobb on it right?” With big brown pleading eyes he knew she couldn't resist, The Doctor pat the side of the bed and with just a tiny little sligh missgiving, she sat besides him once more.

He stretched an arm out and followed it with an up-raising of an eyebrow in both question and request. Rose blinked solidly once in fond remembrance and stretched out towards him and closed the hug he'd silently asked for.

“You've always been the hugger in this relationship Doctor.”

Affectionately, he brushed a lock of her blonde hair as they pulled away. Knowing he'd have to be the instigator of this due conversation he started.

“You call me Doctor. Hmm. Calling me by that name just to please me, is my concern.” Lowering his head for a moment to collect his thoughts he continued. “I don't want you to please me. I want you to understand and know that it IS me”.

Rose lifted a hand to her face and shook her head. “Its just... difficult to understand. Is'all Doctor. You've always been this impossible... man.”

As quick as you please, he affectionately pecked her brow before she could react.

“That's why you love me.” He smirked self-assured in that fact.

Mocking and half-heartedly frowning, Rose lifted a fist and bonked him on the head softly.

“Oi! I'm injured.” He placed a dramatic right hand to his single-heart and faint-collapsed back unto the bed. 

Tilting his head sideways, he licked his upper teeth and thoughtfully flicked his tongue. 

“But you're right. I've always been this cosmically complex time-event. Oncoming storm right? Now I'm a complicated cosmically complex duplicated Time-Lord partially human meta-crisis event.” 

He had her full attention and she laughed genuinely at his attempt to lighten the tension between them. Truthfully she did want to understand and wavered towards accepting him . However each time she did, she remembered the TARDIS and started back to point 1. She shared her thoughts to him as much as they sat in bed. The evening night carrying on slowly.

“Hmm... let me see. How to explain this better? We were rushed... Saving the universe and all that. Right?” He winked “Lets start with my regeneration then.”

“Okay.” Rose shifted on the bed into a more comfortable position and by her own initiative latched onto one of his hands. 

His right one. That special hand which was fully Time Lord. The Doctor took stock of himself then. The Tea had done its work and, although he did have a headache. The conversation they currently were having was too important to cave into his current physical pains.

“The day... that the pilot fish and the Sycorax came. You... to put it lightly; Gave up on me.” 

As she was about to open her mouth in protest he lifted his left one in a gesture that conveyed he would explain. Firmly he kept hold of her right one.

“That was... because I was a stranger then to you. You felt that I had failed you. Abandoned you even. That I was gone and that this other man, wouldn't be the same.” He smiled sadly at the awkward memories. “That's what I am now... an awkward stranger. That feeling of abandonment and potential of rejection of me is still there.”

He brought her hand up to kiss and placed his left on her own. She was holding back on things she wanted to say. He was aware she wanted fully to deny that she'd ever abandon him. But she knew it to be true as well. He'd never force her or expects her to justify those types of feelings. He hoped he conveyed those sentiments now.

“But you got to know this new me. Fell in love with that Doctor again, just as I fell in love with you a second time.”

Her eyes scrunched up emotionally as he carried on. Put into this new light, she was starting to understand and the feelings of guilt over her uncertainty were no doubt surfacing.

“Rose. I've just regenerated. Quite literally. Although, the circumstances have been extraordinary. I'm the same as I was back on that Christmas day. I literally don't know who this new me is. Who I am. Once again. Although... I've already demonstrated myself capable of...” He trailed off.

“Of what?” Rose picked up.

Suddenly his head felt very heavy and dragged his whole demeanour down. The sensation of sudden weight was surprising to him.

“...Murder.” 

His teeth bared into a scowl as he looked up. Fully accepting her recriminations of him. And he found...

None.

“Doctor, I think we both know very well by now. That the Dalek are not to be given second chances.”

She reached confidently for the back of his neck and placed her own forehead on his own. The Time-Lord couldn't argue with her on this position. He was fully taken by surprise of her actions and gulped in air as she manoeuvred closer.

“If you hadn't done it, I would have....” His eyes widened and a look of guilt spread to his eyes.

She had tears streaming from her eyes, but also had a smile on her face as he looked up at her with melancholic remorse. “And knowing you. You would have regretted and hated that I've had to do it instead of you. You would have left again. here all the same! Just as much as you're bashing yourself right now for having done it and literally exiled 'yourself' here. But Doctor...”

She parted and set both hands on his face and he waited his own hands on her forearm in rapt attention. Focus sharpened and on edge, waiting for what she was about to say.

“No one can be perfect. Not even you.”

The weight lifted and his demeanour changed. If there was one person he could believe it was Rose Tyler.

“I suppose... not.”

She threw her head back and laughed, closing her eyes in her mirth. After a short moment and blindly, she lowered herself and closed quarters to kiss him. His brown eyes widened. He hadn't at all thought that she would come to terms so quickly.

He immediately parted his lips and let her take the lead, remaining passive as she snogged him. But she removed her lips just as he thought it was getting to a good start. 

“I'm going in my room. K?”

At his puppy-eye frown. She poked his nose with as close familiarity as she used to. Turning his frown upside down.

“I just need some time.” She finished her thought and her weight lifting off the bed was already missed.

He wiggled his fingers comically in support of her decision and smiled largely. He could tell that she was torn with her own decision to give herself space. But... if he couldn't tell that someone needed time, then he couldn't properly call himself the last of the time-lords in this universe or any other.

“Goodnight.” He bade her, giving her that final push. She smiled warmly and he felt his own unique human heart beat speed up in affectionate response.

She flicked the lights off, and he was alone in his own aching head once again.


End file.
